


Very Definitely Broken...  ...Phone!

by ReaderRose



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, Loneliness, Papyrus Has Issues, Papyrus Is Very Happy And Completely Fine, Papyrus Knows More Than He Lets On, Papyrus Needs A Hug, Post-Undertale Neutral Route - Empress Undyne Ending, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 13:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12255315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaderRose/pseuds/ReaderRose
Summary: Papyrus's Phone is Very Definitely Broken so if someone could fix it so he can have friends again, that would be very nice and helpful.





	Very Definitely Broken...  ...Phone!

**Author's Note:**

> Accidentally wrote this when I was trying to write an entirely different thing.
> 
> Also is there a tag I can use for "cheery narration, insecure skeleton"?
> 
> I wanted my five this month to be all horror or spooky but I'll forget if I don't upload this now.

**** Papyrus hadn't really known what to think, when his best friend became the Empress. It was definitely a very new and strange sort of situation! There were no guidebooks for this, no readily available references for what to do.    
  
Did he have to be formal, now? All titles and addresses? Was that only in public, or would he have to call her her Majesty all the time, even when they were just hanging out?    
  
Could they even hang out!? Did one hang out with monarchs?    
  
He wasn't sure. He liked to believe he was deserving of her company, and that she would miss being friends with him if they couldn't continue cooking lessons and japery and fun! He wanted to believe that she would call him whenever she needed him, any moment now, but his pocket failed to vibrate again and again, and he wondered if it was uncharged, or simply broken, and so he went to the only person whom he knew who did phone things, and if she happened to also be someone who could hint answers to the questions he had about his former captain, well, perhaps that was just a happy coincidence and not at all planned by him!   
  
He certainly wasn't extremely very lonely! He simply needed to be sure that if the Queen of All Monsters called him, he would have the capacity to answer it.    
  
He didn't really wear the battle body anymore. It felt weird after all that had happened, so he put on a long shirt he had made himself with the Empress’s face drawn on it that said “UNDYNE IS VERY COOL.” A second thought when he had created it lead to “Empress” being added in somewhat awkwardly above the face and a little to the side. He wasn't sure how formal t-shirts were meant to be, but he needed to be careful. Undyne was… Admittedly a little bit scary as a ruler and he didn't want to break any laws!   
  


When he reached the Hotland Strange Dog House, he knocked, and knocked, and continued to knock, but to no avail! No one answered! Perhaps the door was broken, too, just like his phone! It was locked. He wished the locking was the part that was broken, and not the knocking, but no matter! He knew this place had never been to like the back of his hand, just like he knew there was a back door. Which was… Also very broken due to being locked and not responding to any of his knocking!!   
  
Wowie! Both main doors, completely locked! Poor Dr. Alphys might be trapped inside! He nearly sent her a text asking if she needed rescue, before realizing the better of it and smiling. Because his phone was broken. If she got the message then his phone would not be broken! And thus he would have no reason to be here! Texting her!    
  
Silly him!   
  
So Papyrus used his personal passcode for the secret side entrance and got in that way, as he was getting very kind of a bit sick of this part of the story.

 

Alphys seemed shocked to see him, which really just confirmed the theory that her doors were very faulty as his fervent knocking really should have tipped her off.    
  
“I THINK MY PHONE IS BROKEN.”   
  
She stared at him as if he had suddenly grown an extra head, but he checked and he had not. But when she finally found her words to ask him why, he found a bit of difficulty in explaining the situation. It was Just so obvious! He couldn't even explain how he knew without stumbling over his own words!    
  
“UNDYNE HASN'T CALLED ME IN 2 MONTHS,” was the best that he could manage. He hastily added an “EMPRESS. EMPRESS UNDYNE. OUR RULER.” His smile went solid as he spoke and the words fully dawned on him. The most important person in the underground. Hadn't called him. Him. An unemployed skeleton who had no friends or useful skillsets. A former-part-time sentry who had let a human hug him. Who had let them go unabated. Him. _The Empress_ hadn't called _him._ __  
  
He was very good at believing in almost anything but even he was having a little trouble with this one, honestly. Still, Alphys took the phone, seemingly willing to humor him as people often did.    
  
She looked at him, and at the phone, and again back at him, before her expression changed to something he recognized (pity) and something he didn't.    
  
“Y-you know what? I-I-I think you're r-right. Eheh. The phone i-is broken. If you come back tomorrow I'll have it all fixed for you.”

  
She spoke to him like she was speaking to a child but he accepted it graciously all the same, letting her take it, making her promise that if it started working and Undyne called, she would answer in two rings or less, and notify him immediately on Undernet!   
  
And she agreed to his terms to be polite and he set off back home, feeling himself reeling only once he was in safety at the heat of that awful place, the ways the floors in the lab echoed, the smell of disinfectant and all things he'd ignored in his attempt to get in touch with his fr-Empress again. He hated Hotland.   
  
He knew the busy Royal Scientist wouldn't humor him to this extent, but he still waited patiently at his desk until morning and all through breakfast, until such a time as it felt reasonable to call today yesterday's “tomorrow.”   
  
He received no notifications in that time.   


 

It took a few hours to get his phone back at a suspiciously scheduled unscheduled time, at which point, as the phone was immediately within his grasp, he received a call from the Empress herself, who had been trying to get a hold of him before the phone broke, and who requested his presence, formally, at the castle today. She had a very important royal position that needed to be filled, The Most Important Royal Position, in fact! Only he could fill the role!   
  
She simply had been in a panic, being unable to contact him! (For two months! With every power the highest position in the land provided her!)   
  
He knew it was all a show for his benefit, ego a little too bruised by the recent isolation to truly fall for anything he normally might willingly allow himself to. He only believed in coincidences when he was in an accepting mood, but he went along with it anyway, because if people didn't like him when he was smiling and happy and believed whatever they said, how could he hope to be liked when he was moody and suspicious and tired and irritable?   
  
He couldn't hope that. He wasn't enough of an optimist to hope that.    
  
So he smiled and rushed to the Castle as quickly as he could, taking what little he could get.


End file.
